Date of Award

Winter 3-1-2022

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy in Clinical Psychology (PhD)

Department

Clinical Psychology

First Advisor/Committee Member

Amy H. Mezulis

Second Advisor/Committee Member

Lynette H. Bikos

Third Advisor/Committee Member

Margot Bastin

Abstract

This study examined the frequency of daily positive events as a predictor of positive emotion regulation strategies in adolescence, particularly dampening and positive rumination. Furthermore, I hypothesized this relationship may be moderated by the gender of the adolescent and their parent’s socialization of positive emotion, through enhancing or dampening their adolescent’s positive emotion. Lastly, I hypothesized that the moderation of parental socialization of positive emotion on emotion regulation would differ based on the gender of the adolescent. Adolescents in Belgium participated in a longitudinal self-report study (nbaseline= 815) assessed at three timepoints. Cross-sectionally, daily positive events significantly predicted adolescent positive rumination, such that as the frequency of daily positive events increased as youth positive rumination increased. Both cross-sectionally and longitudinally, maternal and paternal enhancing predicted youth positive rumination. Additionally, both maternal and paternal enhancing moderated the relationship between daily positive events and youth positive rumination, such that greater frequency of daily positive events predicted greater youth positive rumination, and the relationship was strengthened by greater parental enhancing. Maternal enhancing also buffered the relationship between daily positive events and dampening. Increased parental dampening cross-sectionally predicted greater dampening, and longitudinally predicted decreased dampening. Parental dampening did not moderate the relationship between daily positive events and emotion regulation strategies. The above relationships did not differ for boys and girls. Three-way interactions of gender on the moderation of the relationship between daily positive events and emotion regulation strategies by parental socialization of emotion were not able to be interpreted due to non-significance at the two-way interaction level. These results suggest a therapeutic value to increased daily positive events and parental enhancing in the development of adaptive emotion regulation strategies for adolescents.

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